All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a
blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he
learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a
table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood
consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules
consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of
answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth
of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists.
Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot
exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its
own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is
valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his
knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s
thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict
oneself from the realm of reality.

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which
you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you
have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and
determines your life and your character.

Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man
is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full,
focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional.

Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not.”
Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not.”
Metaphysically, the choice “to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death.

Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And
his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of
you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful
suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the
refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of
unfocusing your mind’ and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of
judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you
refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the
verdict “It is.” Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate
existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is
not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say “It
is,” you are refusing to say “I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are
negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’—he is
declaring: “Who am I to live?”

This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or
non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.

Thinking is a delicate, difficult process, which man cannot perform unless
knowledge is his goal, logic is his method, and the judgment of his mind is
his guiding absolute. Thought requires selfishness, the fundamental
selfishness of a rational faculty that places nothing above the integrity of
its own function.

A man cannot think if he places something—anything—above his perception of
reality. He cannot follow the evidence unswervingly or uphold his conclusions
intransigently, while regarding compliance with other men as his moral
imperative, self-abasement as his highest virtue, and sacrifice as his primary
duty. He cannot use his brain while surrendering his sovereignty over it,
i.e., while accepting his neighbors as its owner and term-setter.

The concept “thought” is formed by retaining the distinguishing characteristics
of the psychological action (a purposefully directed process of cognition) and
by omitting the particular contents as well as the degree of the intellectual
effort’s intensity.

The intensity of a process of thought and of the intellectual effort required
varies according to the scope of its content; it varies when one grasps the
concept “table” or the concept “justice,” when one grasps that 2 + 2 = 4 or
that e = mc2.